Having cut my UNIX teeth on the JHU 11/45, I can tell you very much that it did have split I/D. V6 supported split I/D for user mode programs. The kernel originally wasn’t split I/D. Version 7, if I’m recalling properly, did run the kernel split I/D on the 45 and 70. ------ Original Message ------ From "Kenneth Goodwin" To "Will Senn" Cc "The Eunuchs Hysterical Society" Date 8/3/23, 5:05:31 PM Subject [TUHS] Re: Split addressing (I/D) space (inspired by the death of the python... thread) >At the risk of exposing my ignorance and thus being events long long >ago in history.... >And my mind now old and feeble... > >😆 🤣 > >1. I don't think the 11/45 had split I & d. >But I could be wrong. >That did not appear until the 11/70 >And was in the later generation 11/44 several years later. > >2. The kernel determined it by MMU type and managed it solely. The >assembler and loader always built the binary object file as the three >sections - instructions, data and bss spaces so loading an object file >could be done on any platform. >Programmers generally did not worry about the underlying hardware > >3. I don't recall if a systype style system call was available in v7 to >give you a machine type to switch off of. > >With something like that you could determine memory availability hard >limits on the DATA/bss side if you needed to. > >But that was also easily determined by a allocation failure in >malloc/sbrk with an out of memory error. > >If you really needed to know availability, you could have a start up >subroutine that would loop trying to malloc ever decreasing memory >sizes until success and until out of available memory error. >Then release it all back via free(). Or manage it internally. > >As I recall however vaguely, there was an attempt to split the kernel >into two pieces. One running in kernel mode and one running in >supervisor mode in order to double the amount of available instruction >and data spaces for the operating system. I recall playing around with >what was there trying to get it to work right. >I was trying to support over 200 users on a pdp 11/70 at the time >running a massive insurance database system. > >On Thu, Aug 3, 2023, 4:35 PM Will Senn wrote: >>Does unix (v7) know about the PDP-11 45's split I/D space through >>configuration or is it convention and programmer's responsibility to >>know and manage what's actually available? >> >>Will >> >>On 8/3/23 12:00, Rich Salz wrote: >> > What, we all need something to kick now that we've beaten sendmail? >> > How about something unix, ideally a decade old? >>